Hennessy Garza Rose, Mahoney Jane E, Burns Morgan, Quanbeck Andrew
Joseph J Zilber College of Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
J Clin Transl Sci. 2025 Feb 27;9(1):e64. doi: 10.1017/cts.2025.11. eCollection 2025.
Translational science and implementation science are two disciplines that integrate scientific findings into practice within healthcare. One method to assess the integration of these fields is to review the academic crossover between the disciplines with respect to shared citations in the peer-reviewed literature.
This paper used direct citation network analysis to identify potential conceptual gaps and connections between the literature in implementation science and translational science. Bibliographic references were downloaded from Web of Science to create directed citation network maps in VosViewer. Heat maps visualized the top cited literature in each field.
A literature search yielded 6,111 publications in translational science and 7,003 publications in implementation science. When all publications were combined in a directed citation network map, two separate groups of publications emerged, representing the two fields of implementation science and translational science. When the top 50 cited translational science publications were combined with implementation science publications, 14% had a 100%+ increase in citation links, 44% had a mean increase of 2.4%, and 42% shared no links. When the top 50 cited implementation science publications were combined with translational science publications, 2% had a 100%+ increase in citation links, 92% had a 3.3% mean increase, and 6% had no shared links.
Results suggest moderate academic overlap in the way published authors cite each other between translational science and implementation science. We hope the implications of this paper may promote continued collaborations between these fields to disseminate lessons learned and bridge research into practice more efficiently.
转化科学与实施科学是将科学研究成果应用于医疗保健实践的两个学科。评估这两个领域融合情况的一种方法是，通过同行评审文献中共同引用情况来审视学科间的学术交叉。
本文采用直接引文网络分析，以识别实施科学与转化科学文献之间潜在的概念差距与联系。从科学网下载文献参考资料，在VosViewer中创建直接引文网络图。热图展示了各领域被引用次数最多的文献。
文献检索得出转化科学领域有6111篇出版物，实施科学领域有7003篇出版物。当所有出版物合并在一个直接引文网络图中时，出现了两组独立的出版物，分别代表实施科学和转化科学这两个领域。当被引用次数最多的50篇转化科学出版物与实施科学出版物合并时，14%的出版物的引用链接增加了100%以上，44%的出版物平均增加了2.4%，42%的出版物没有共享链接。当被引用次数最多的50篇实施科学出版物与转化科学出版物合并时，2%的出版物的引用链接增加了100%以上，92%的出版物平均增加了3.3%，6%的出版物没有共享链接。
结果表明，在已发表作者相互引用的方式上，转化科学与实施科学之间存在适度的学术重叠。我们希望本文的研究结果能够促进这些领域之间的持续合作，以便更有效地传播经验教训，并将研究成果应用于实践。
